Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1871 — Lost in the Woods—Seventy-two Honrs without Food. [ARTICLE]

Lost in the Woods—Seventy-two Honrs without Food.

A young lady, Miss Matilda Steen, left San Francisco six or seven weeks ago, where she has been following the business of a dressmaker, to join her brothers, who are engaged in making tan-bark in the neighborhood of the Garcia River, Point Arena, Mendocino County. She had been living with them some weeks, when one morning about 11 a. m. (on the 26 ult.) she discovered that she had forgotten to put knives in their lunch basket, so she determined to take them to the spot where her brothers were working. She did so, with great difficulty—the forest being like those of many parts of Oregon and British Columbia, a dense mass of undergrowth, immense fallen logs, etc., and very mountainous country. She then started to return, one of her brothers offering to accompany her. This she declined, saying that she had found her way in, and she could surely find her way out again. It was at this time she got lost Hear her story: When I first found I was, lost, I was badly frightened. I ran through the brush as fast as I could, howling at every step, but after awhile I cooled down and confined my locomotion to a fast walk. About an hour, I should think, after I left my brother, I heard the sound of an axe, and I halloed to the chopper and plainly heard him answer. If I had kept on hallooing and had remained where 1 was, the chopper would soon have come to me, as I have learned since I got in, but I thought that I could surely follow up the sound of the axe, and I triedit. Alas! I was following the echo. I was going down a deep canyon and the sound died away and I was left alone. Great God 1 alone in such a place! For awhile my very sight grew aim - all things reeled around me. What would become of me if I should never find my way out! Ah! a bright thought flashed through my mind. A thought which gave me joy in an instant —there is a God who i» able to eave! From, this time forward I was perfectly resigned to my fate, feeliqg.that if itwas God’s good pleasure to save me, He would do in good time. All day I traveled, now pulling myself up steep, brushy mountains, now roiling, sliding, tumbling down into the deepest canyons I ever beheld. Sometimes the mountains were so steep that it was utterly impossible for me to walk down them, and I was forced to wrap my dress around my feet, and actually slide down on my back.

The first night found me on the side of a mountain, and about half way to the top. I looked around me to find a level place where I could rest through the night, but no such place could I find, so I just placed my feet against a tree to keep from sliding down the mountain, and in this attitude I remained during the night Occasionally I would wake, and whenever I awoke, I would halloo at the top of my voice, thinking, perhaps, some one might hear me. Vain nope! I had no fear of any wild beasts. As soon as morning dawned I resumed my toilsome journey up, up, up, down, down, down. The bright sun seemed to greet me with a smile, and beckoned me to him as he loomed grandly above the distant mountains, and I wondered whether his bright face looked upon another humau being in all the wide, wide world so utterly lost, lost as poor me. The second day I came to two or three mountains covered with chapperal and white thorn, and I was obliged to crawl through it like a snake. When I would get through, all tom and bleeding, I would involuntarily exclaim, as I looked behind me, how in the name of God did 1 ever get through that! As I was going down a mountain I heard a step behind me, and looking around discovered that it was a deer followed me, and when I picked up a stick and threw at it it ran oil' and I saw it no more. I tried often, the first day, to retrace my steps, but every time I failed, finding by a shred of my dress, a broken twig of something or other, that I was only going round and round. I have been asked why I didn’t follow the streams, as if they would have led me out But I could not; there were so many large logs and rocks in them that it was impossible. 1 had a good watch and a bunch of keys with me, and, as an evidence that I didn’t go crazy, as many supposed I would, I didn’t lose either. I deeply regretted that I didn’t have the key of the watch with me. On Thursday, about noon, I suddenly came out to a trail, and, like Robinson Crusoe, I saw a human track I That track gladdened my heart as never a track did before. I followed the track and saw a fence, and next a house 1 Thank God! I am saved. When I got dose Jo the house I stopped and halloed, and some gentleman came but and invited me in. I went in and told them that I was the lost woman. They said they had heard of my being loot the night before, and were on the lookout for me. They prepared some food forme, and were very much afraid I would eat too much. I ate very little. Somehow I was not hungry. When I finished my meal I told them I wanted to go home, but they would not hear of it They said I was too much fatigued to attempt ft that night and one of them got on a horse and went to the Garcia mill to bear the news. One of my brothers came out that evening as soon as he heard the news, and I rode home on Friday morning.— Ban Jfrancine# Alta. > A obntlkman of West Chester, Pa, thinks that he has discovered a substance which at a cost of twenty cents per barrel will preserve apples, peaches, grapes, pears, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, cantelopes, watermelons, and many other fruits and vegetable* a year or more, as fresh as when taken from the vines. Joskph Car-Dwann, of Columbus, 0., mysteriously disappeared a year ago, and it is just ascertained that he died in an insane asylum at New Orleans, and was buried as a pauper. He left an estate valued at <150,000. ’ , '