26 THE RIVERINE DISTRICT 



old Australian bushman to be lost ; it is quite as rare an 

 occurrence for a " green " hand to escape. Even intelligent 

 strangers get bewildered in the bush, and seem to have no 

 better idea of taking the right course than a young child 

 would have. To the true bushman it seems ridiculous 

 that a person should wander for hours, and quite possibly 

 for days, without moving a mile away from the spot where 

 he first lost his reckoning. Yet this is the rule. Over 

 and over again has it been proved that men have moved 

 round in a small circle for more than a week, and 

 ultimately died of exhaustion within a few hundred yards 

 of the place from whence they started on the walk of 

 death. Not only so, but on two occasions I have known of 

 men dying within five miles of the houses where they had 

 received hospitality, and in one of these cases the man 

 must have lived a fortnight, constantly moving round a 

 circle which never had a diameter of a mile and a half. 

 He must have repeatedly passed his old fire-places, and 

 perceived that he was making no headway in any direction, 

 and yet seemed unable to break away from the fatal 

 circle. What is the explanation ? It is difficult to give an 

 altogether satisfactory one. The strange conduct of some 

 wanderers in such circumstances is suggestive of insanity. 

 But some well-known facts, coupled with the narratives of 

 rescued persons, point to the explanation that the lost 

 persons have simply perished owing to fright — bewilder- 

 ment. It may not seem much to be lost on a wide plain 

 or in a forest — an account of such an adventure does not 

 make very exciting reading in a book — it is really very 

 unnerving to the wanderer who does not know how to act 

 with assured confidence in such circumstances ; and the more 

 he finds himself involved, the more his consciousness that 

 he is lost seems to have a paralysing effect on the mind 

 of the wanderer, rendering him incapable of vigorous 

 thought or action. Sometimes he even dies of sheer 

 fright; and some, after a time finding they continually 

 return to the same spot, give way to despair, lie down, 

 and make no further effort to save themselves. 



Often the question has been put to me : " But how is 



