IN THE BURNING BUSH.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 8, 22 February 1908, Page 26

IN THE BURNING BUSH.

RELENTLESSNESS OF THE FIRE FIEND. MILES AND MILES OF FLAME AND SMOKE. “lhey also serve who only stand and wait.” The full meaning of the poet’s line comes home to one after seeing back block settlers living through the awful suspense of a bush fire. It is not so much the actual damage that worries him, but it is the horrible uncertainty that gets on his nerves and brings the set lines of anxiety to his brow. “If it would only take what it has got and leave it at that we would not mind, but who can tell where it is going to stop?” asked Mr. White, an Otau settler, of a “Star” representative who went up to have a look at the fires raging in that district. Otau, as most people are probably aware, is upon the ranges, about eight miles from Clevedon, on the Wairoa South River. The land is all taken up, and many homesteads are scattered over the block. A great part of it is still in bush and the houses of the settlers stand in the midst of forest in all stages — some standing, some half cleared, and some of the land is grassed, and carrying a good deal of stock. The fires have been burning here, as they have in many other parts for the past month or so, but it was on Wednesday last that the settlers first experienced any immediate danger. A gale of wind sprang up on that day, and the slumbering Hames, which had hitherto contented themselves with quietly demolishing patches of the bush, were; fanned into something wild and fierce. The fire fiend swept over the face of the land like a devastating spirit, and thousands of pounds of damage were done in the course of a few hours. Every stick and every blade on the earth is bone dry as the result of the abnormal season we have had, and the fire ran unchecked through mile after mile of bush, scrub, and clearing. Nothing checked it in its mad career. All night the employees of Orum’s timber mill fought with the flames to save the valuable plant, which at much cost and trouble had been carted right out to the heart of the block. Ceaseless vigilance and a slight change, in the wind enabled them to save the property, but the danger is not even over now and the men have still to watch every spark that comes wheeling across on the breeze. As we rode along the Otau Road we met a waggoner driving a four-wheel timber lorry, and when asked how the fires were out baek, he said he went out to bring in a load but had been forced to turn baek, as the horses would not face the fire, which was sweeping across the roadway. Coughing and choking with the all-per-vading smoke which hangs over the country like a funeral pall we managed to get our reluctant horses past the danger zone, and a few miles further on came to the homestead of Mr. Fawcett, which had been in most danger of being consumed by the hungry fiend. Standing on a hill surrounded by smoking fires on every hand, the owner showed us where the fire had swept up the valley across 70 or 80 chains of bush and clearing in an hour and a-half. It seems to travel with the rapidity of thought, and the very earth itself appears to burn. Lone stumps and gaunt dead trees Standing in the middle of a clearing suddenly smoke in one or two places and soon are streaks of flame. The slightest spark carried on the wind is enough to awaken the fire that now seems latent in all nature. A solid looking stump is burned right out of the ground in an incredibly short time, and even the spreading roots, half bedded in the soil are consumed, leaving the blackened likeness of an evil octopus with its great body and cruel arm.:—symbolical of the. all devouring genius of the pitiless fire! “VV here my stock is I don’t know,” said Mr. Fawcett, as we gazeu into the impenetrable wall of smoke that surrounded the place. An almost human cry from out the smoke across the ridges told where some poor beast had been eaught by the fire, and the haunting sound was repeated every few minutes. Some five hundred sheep and between (10 and 70 head of cattle were out there somewhere in the smoke, and the only hope was that they were on the other

side of the flames. The awfulness of it is that nothing can be done; man is quite helpless before the relentless fire. The flames leap across space, and the sparks fly for inconceivable distances from the tall trees, particularly the dead ones. Ever and anon one of the monsters falls to the ground with a deafening roar, and the flames burst out afresh and roar with glee as they see the destruction they have accomplished. In former fires the boundary has always been the standing bush, but this year the fiend knows no limit. He sweeps away all. The standing bush goes this year like matchwood, not with the horrible crackle and rattle as of musketry, which usually marks the burning of green growth, but with the steady and even burn of fallen timber—everything is so parched and crumbling-dry. Such a thing has never been known here before, and this alone shows what the season has been. “And when you consider that it will cost a pound an acre to get it back to its former state,” said the owner, waving his hand over acres and acres of blackened and burning grass paddocks, and he broke oft' abruptly as though enough had been said. Even if the fire stops now (but there is not the slightest prospect of it doing anything of the kind) the loss to the waybaek setttlers will be enormous in the aggregate. While we looked, a couple of chains of fencing fell flat, as the posts were burned through at the bottom, and here and there a few more chains were crumpled up by huge trees which had fallen across it at different points. “And we don't get ten and fourpence a day for putting them to lights,” was the only comment. At one time the house itself was in imminent danger of falling to the capacious maw of the fiend. The wind swept the flames right across the back paddocks, parallel with the homestead, and a sudden change brought them straight for the building, but just in the nick of time the wind veered a point or two, and the flames dividing in a wide fan went to either side. Imagine the feelings of a man compelled to stand idly by and watch the fire slowly stealing the clear ground between him and ruin —or at the very least the loss of years of labour and toil! “A change of wind and we couldn’t stay here five minutes,” remarked one of the small group gazing out on the scene with tired eyes, as he pointed to the oily clouds of smoke rising to the burnished sky, where the sun glares down on the parched earth. One does not need the penetrating eye of the eagle to look at him now. He burns dull and red like copper, casting sickly yellow beams, hardly less hot than the stifling gusts that come down on the wind from the burning bush. Occasionally the smoke is blown away to a thin veil, through which you get fitful glimpses of the valley below, criss-crossed with cultivated fields—all one dead brown, with never a cool green spot on which to rest the blood-shot eyes. And when the breeze dies down the stifling sense of oppression is truly awful. The earth seems to be under some frightful incubus. The range of vision is narrowed to almost nothing. Everything beyond a mile or two is seen through a mist, dimly, and Nature seems in the thrall of a horrible narcotic, drug. You gasp for breath, and long for her to awake. Till it rains she will sleep this awful sleep with its nightmare of blackened earth and awful suspense, but the brassy heavens deny this boon, and the blood red sun holds out no hope as he crawls slowly overhead, pitiless and relentless as fate.

REGULATING ELECTRIC LIGHT. It is possible that the incandescent electric lamp will soon be susceptible to the same amount of regulation as gas, for there is now on the market a lamp operated by a chain which is capable of three degrees of illumination. One point sheds an illumination of 80 per cent of its total capacity, which, in the case of the Iti-candle power lamp, is'barely sufficient to indicate the location of the lamp to one entering the room, and who mav want to reach the light in order to turn it up higher. This tiny glow does awav with the necessity of proving around it the dark in the search of a lamp, often a t the sacrifice of some bric-a-brac or furniture of the room. The second point of adjustment causes the filament to glow at about three quarters of the lamp’s capacity.