I Gathered All The
Things Along The Beach, Made Great Racks For Drying And A Mighty
Blaze.
I had no pots or pans, but an aluminum bottle which would
serve as kettle; and thus I prepared a meal of such things as
were saved - a scrap of pork, some tea and a soggy mass that once
was pilot bread.
Then sat down by the fire to spend five hours of
growing horror, 175 miles from a settlement, canoe smashed, guns
gone, pots and pans gone, specimens all gone, half our bedding
gone, our food gone; but all these things were nothing, compared
with the loss of my three precious journals; 600 pages of observation
and discovery, geographical, botanical, and zoological, 500 drawings,
valuable records made under all sorts of trying circumstances,
discovery and compass survey of the beautiful Nyarling River,
compass survey of the two great northern lakes, discovery of two
great northern rivers, many lakes, a thousand things of interest
to others and priceless to me - my summer's work - gone; yes, I could
bear that, but the three chapters of life and thought irrevocably
gone; the magnitude of this calamity was crushing. Oh, God, this
is the most awful blow that could have fallen at the end of the
six months' trip.
"The hours went by, and the gloom grew deeper, for there was no
sign of the boys. Never till now did the thought of danger enter
my mind. Had they been too foolhardy in their struggle with the
terrible stream?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 238 of 252
Words from 63275 to 63527
of 67135
