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262 wonderful to relate, he neither lost his life, nor even the injured leg; although at one time its preservation appeared so impossible that the day for its amputation was actually fixed, and my husband was asked by the doctor to be present on the occasion.

The history of another accident was told me by the settler's wife to whom it had occurred. Whilst driving a light cart alone, along a bush-track, it was overturned by one of the wheels striking against a "blackboy" stump, her hip being dislocated by the fall. She yet contrived, by crawling upon her hands and knees, to loosen the horse from the shafts, in the hope that his returning home without her would announce her disaster; but he disappointed her by stopping to feed, and she continued to lie upon the ground in solitude and agony for many hours, sadly aware also, as the day sped on, that her prolonged absence would excite neither surprise nor alarm amongst her own family, since they knew that she had left home with the intention of visiting a married son, and would presume that she had been persuaded to sleep at his house. An old native woman, a great-aunt of Binnahan, accidentally discovered her before night in this miserable condition, and treated her with the kindness that characterizes the behaviour of the aborigines in all similar circumstances, who, if they meet a white person lost in the bush, will invariably do their utmost to assist him.

Another lady told me that, having once lost her way on horseback, she tried a coo-ee on the chance of making herself heard by a fellow-creature, when a native, unseen by her previously, appeared as suddenly as did Roderick Dhu's men at his call, and not only guided her into the