Missing Friends: Being the Adventures of a Danish Emigrant in Queensland (1871-1880)Weitemeyer, Thorvald Peter Ludwig
History
Missing Friends: Being the Adventures of a Danish Emigrant in Queensland (1871-1880)
Weitemeyer, Thorvald Peter Ludwig
Queensland -- Description and travel
He said that travelling along he had been overtaken by the flood, and
had camped by himself in a similar place to the one where I had been a
prisoner, only with this difference--that he had had no tent. He had
managed to keep a log on fire all the time, and had hung his blanket
over a pole to form a fly, but of course he had been as wet all the time
as if he had been hauled out of the sea. By the time the water went down
he had eaten every scrap of provision he had, but had nevertheless
reached this station about a fortnight since. Here, as already stated,
they would neither sell nor give him anything. He could not cross the
river to get into town, so, in a terrible condition from hunger, he had
turned back in another direction, some twenty miles or more to where
there was another small station. The country was all flooded on his way,
and for five miles in one stretch he had waded through water to his
shoulders, only being able to know the direction in which he wanted to
go by following along a fence, the top of the posts of which were out of
water. I forget how long it took him to reach this place, but when he
did arrive there it was only to be told that he could get nothing. Being
apparently the sort of man who would bend his neck to any stroke of
misfortune, he had meekly turned away, he did not know himself whither,
when by good luck as the issue proved, he had fainted when close to the
house. A man had then come out and given him something to eat, besides a
little to take with him, and had told him that twenty-five miles in
another direction was a place where he could procure supplies. He had
gone thither, but as the people there had proved but one degree more
merciful than their neighbours, they had only kept him alive a couple of
days, and then started him back here to where I found him. All his money
was seven shillings. The squatter here, as already stated, would neither
sell nor give him anything, and as he saw he could not cross the river
for several days on foot, not being able to swim, he had laid himself
down to die when I arrived on the scene. While he told me all this, he
was gradually getting very sick. The sweat hung in large drops on his
pale face, and he threw himself about writhing in agony. I need scarcely
say, perhaps, that he had eaten with less moderation than he ought. I
bustled about him, trying or wishing to do him good, but I did not know
how. I was also very anxious for us both to be off, because I heard the
squatter fire a gun in the yard, and I concluded that he had come back
and that the old woman had told him what had happened perhaps, or most
likely drawn on her imagination at the same time. As the bishop said
when he saw a criminal on the road to the scaffold: "But for the grace
of God, there go I." The reader of this truthful narrative may decide
for himself who deserved hanging most--the squatter or I; but whatever
the opinion may be, I had undoubtedly committed robbery under arms, and,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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