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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

Saturday

Saturday.

Nothing has happened to vary the monotony of loneliness, and now find I am getting too weak to waste energy in chopping firewood, so collected chips which lie about the hut, and which were left during the slab-splitting and tree falling for its erection. Have got to realise that man is a gregarious animal, and, although there are such beings as hermits, they are the exception that proves the rule. A man may desire to get away from "the hum of cities and the wrath of human life," and be can doubless do the former, but the latter is more prominent than when in the hurley-burley of human strife, and amid thousands of persons.

Unfortunately to-day saw the expiration of the solitary luxury possible to me, for my tobacco was finished. With only my short experience of bush life, I can fully endorse the bushman's choice, viz., that he would rather go without food than a smoke: I believe it serves in some degree as a sudorific, at any rate it seems to palliate the troubles one may be in. Tried smoking tea leaves, but they are a long way off the correct thing, so only took about half dozen puffs at a time,—just enough to satisfy my imagination that I had had a smoke, but no more. I believe the thought of the grand finale is far worse to man in full vigour of life, than the feeling present when the end actually draws near. At any-rate I was now too weak to care about anything (not even eating), and yet I felt no pain, but was quite as comfortable page 17 and satisfied as if in the most luxurious home. About 2 or 3 o'clock I was suddenly startled by the fire-fly which I had hung over the door space, being suddenly pulled on one side, and with it the appearance of Quinten McKinnon and Charles Brown, both members of the Professor Brown search party, and now forming my relief party.

At the time of their arriving, I had just been four days alone, for I was left at mid-day on Tuesday, and my relief arrived at mid-day on Saturday. They brought a good supply of provisions, not omitting a little whiskey and a bottle of Perry Davis' Painkiller, the latter a valuable bush medicine, for it has a healing, stimulating and satisfying effect when taken internally by a person in my state. After a careful meal and the luxury of a real genuine smoke, I went back to my bunk again, and by the morning felt fifty per cent better.