Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1875 — Lost Boy Found in a Rattlesnakes’ Den. [ARTICLE]

Lost Boy Found in a Rattlesnakes’ Den.

In Blooming Grove, Pike County, lives the family of a man named Charles Dunning, consisting of himself, his wife and three children, aged six, four and two and a half years. On Monday of last week the children went out to play in the fields. After being absent some time the two oldest returned weeping to the house and said they had lost their little brother in tlie woods. Mrs, Dunning, thinking she could find the child without difficulty, went out into tlie woods and looked tor some distance around, calling him by name. IJeing unable to discover any trace of hinfshe became alarmed and hastened back to the village and spread the news of the child’s loss." Blooming Grove is composed mainly of the dwellings of the employes of Jacob Klienham’s tannery, and when the news of the little boy’s loss became general the greatest excitement prevailed. - Business was stopped at the tannery and forty men started to scour the woods in search of the child. All the rest of the day they tramped through the woods without finding any trace ot"the missing little one, and all night pine torches flashed through the forest aisles, frightening from their perches myriads of night birds, which answered with their shrill cries the shouts of the men calling to the child. During the night a catamount was shot, but the momins dawned upon an unsuccessful party of sacl-hearted villagers. After a short rest the hunt was again commenced, and all day Tuesday and all Tuesday night was prosecuted diligently, but with no better result. The opinion now was general that the child had been killed and eaten by wild beasts, which still haunt the Pike County wilderness. The search was continued, however, at the urgent appeal of the mother of the boy. Toward noon on Wednesday one of the party started away in a direction which had not been investigated as yet. Passing about a hundred yards through a laurel s#amp two miles* from the viUage, he r&ne out in an open space about thirty feet square. The opening was walled in

on every side by a thick growth of laurel, and was well filled with large rocks marked with crevices and large seams, resembling an abandoned quarry. The instant the man stepped into the place, he was startled by the sound of a rattlesnake, giving him warning to pause. Looking down, he saw the snake coiled up about four feet away, in readiness to spring at the first provocation. The backwoodsman had seen such things before, and, picking up a club, dispatched the snake at one blow. He was not prepared for the developments that followed, however. Glancing about him, he made the unpleasant discovery that he in a place pre-empted by a colony of rattlesnakes; in short, he was in a den of deadly reptiles. From crevices and creases in the rocks and on the ground he saw numbers of them lying in various positions, bathing their slim proportions in the sunshine. The man made up his mind that the place had no particular charm for him, and w as about to beat a hasty retreat, when his eyes fell on a scene that transfixed him with horror. On a low r , flat rock, not more than six feet from where the man stood, lay the apparently lifeless form of the little boy they had been looking for so long. Stretched by his side, not more than three inches aw ay from him, was a huge rattlesnake, while near his feet two more lay coiled up, all evidently undisturbed by the presence ,of the child. While the man did not suppose for an instant that the boy w r as alive, he determined to rescue the body from so horrible a sepulcher, and with well-di-rected blows from his club killed the three snakes that held possession of the child. Every blow was responded to by the blood-curdling din of rattles from the snakes that lay near the rock. While he was examining the ground between him and the child to see if any of the reptiles lay on that side, he was startled to see the supposed dead infant rise with an effort to a sitting position, stare wildly about w’ith a crazed, haggard look, and then sink back upon the rock. The next instant the stouthearted w’oodman had sprung upon the rock, and seizing the child,bore him away quickly from the loathsome den, and in a few minutes placed him in the arms of his distracted mother, amid the general rejoicing of the whole village. The child was unconscious, and is yet lying in a critical condition, being delirious with fever brought on by the unparalleled hardship and privation he suffered in his three days’ w andering alone in the forest befofe which the stout-hearted hunter would have quailed.— Port Jervis (N. F.) Union.