Connecticut western news., 1875-07-23
LOST IN THE WILDERNESS,

Rivaling the Old Story of the Babes in the
 Woods---The Experience of Child that
 went to Gather May Apples---Five Days
 Lost in the Depths of a Pennsylvania
 Forest.
 Sixteen miles from the mountain ham let of Lackawaxan, over a rough and tough forest road, is the little settlement ,of Blooming Grove. Three miles fur ther is another and nameless neighbor- hood, that lies like beautiful picture in the center of imitless forest, and guarded by lofty, symetrically rounded mountains. A half mile from the beaten track of the turnpike, and on the edge of the famed Blooming Grove Hunting Park, is the little log cabin of Charles Durlling. MT. Durlling's house is on the base line of gloomy divide of the hills, and three or four cabins, similar to his own, complete the settlement. On every side, as far as the horizon, is the unbroken expanse of the wilderness, and the black pine and hemlock woods glover above his very door sill. About half-past three on the afternoon of June 7, MT. Durlling's eight children were playing about the dooryard and in the barn, few rods from the house. The eldest of the number proposed that they go hunting for May apples, which grow wild in the swamps at this season of the year. Four of the little ones, John, Lima, Louisa and Herman, started up a steep path that leads up to the noun tains, and all were soon eagerly at work in gathering the apples. The elders be- came so interested in their sport that they forgot to look out for their little brother Herman, who, attracted by the unusual freedom that was given him, gradually wandered away from the par ty. He followed the little bush-lined track that leads into broad, open cart road, about one hundred rods from the house. The path, blooming with rhodo- dendrons, the sailors cap, and other beautiful woodland flowers, beguiled the little fellow on, and he went deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest, pick ing wild strawberries and the fruit of the swamp apple tree as he went. He was not missed by his companions under half an hour or more, until, tired with their play, they set out for their home and then they thought that he had gone back alone. At the house they asked their mother if Herman had come home, and when she told them that he had not, they began to cry, and said that he must be lost in the woods.
 The whole family set off to find the little fellow, but after searching about the edge of the woods in vain, they started for neighbours, at whose house MT. Durlling was making a call. In twenty minutes after the disappearance of the boy Mir. Durlling was upon the trail, with his children and immediate neighbors, with their wives and children. All the afternoon they hunted, calling again and again the name of the little wanderer in vain. At nightfall the whole neighborhood had been alarmed, anl fifteen or twenty men, women and chil- dren with lanterns and torches searched all the copses of the forests, until three o'clock the next morning. Again and again they shouted to the little cast away, calling him by name, but only the cries of night birds, the voices of wild animals, and the moan of the swaying pines gave back an answer. The next day dawned gray and chilly, but saw an unusual sight in the neighborhood. The news of the loss of the little child had spread for miles around, and forty or | fifty persons were scattered about the yard of MT. Durlling at the break of | day. At Blooming Grove, three miles below, the large tanneries were stopped, the farmers focked in from Tod's val ley and from the "Knob," and the whole country for miles wore the quiet appear ance of Sabbath. All joined in the search through Tuesday, marching forty abreast, threading every woody aisle, and securing every defile and nook.
 At night the last hope of finding the boy alive was given up, but still the search was persisted in. Late in the evening one of the men, hardening to his cry of alarm, thought that he de- tected the voice of.-a child, but the noise of his companions drowned the notes, and he concluded that he had been misled by the scream of 8 wildcat or of 8 catamount. On Monday the party stumbled upon and killed two rattlesnakes, and on Tuesday the only fruit of the days work was the destruc- tion of three more of these reptiles. The mother of Herman, who was sick at home and unable to join in the search for her child, was distracted by untold terrors of the imagination. She at once gave up all hope, through her knowl- edge of the perils of the woods, and concluded that her boy had either been bitten by rattlesnake or had been de stroyed by wild beasts. Her fears o1 bears, which are unusually plentiful ir Pike county this year, one of them being encountered recently in the open road near Blooming Grove by farmers daughter as she was coming home from milking, made her wild, with despair.
 All Tuesday night lanterns flashed among the gloomy pines, and groups o