The Weekly Gazette for Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Cleveland District. — 1879-12-06 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

DOGGED BY ASSASSINS.  One cold night the party halted at a spot where, if, as seemed probable, any rain ehuuld fall, they would be in a good place to catch it; and Eyre, having seen his followers snug fat the night, as he supposed, beside the break-winds of boughs that had been constructed, went out to look after the horses, which had ramble' l for some distance in search of fodder. They had strayed a longer distance than he had imagined, but were eventually found; and then, as he was just turning there back towards the direction of the camp, he was startled to hear the report of a gun. Hurrietly he ran towards the camp. The boy Wylie, in a state of wild excitement, met him, and cried aloud, "Oh, massa, massa, come here l" And thea, I whea he reached the spot where he had left party apparently sleeping, he found his faithful friend and ally, Baxter, in the agony of death, with the blood flowing from a wound in his left breast, treacherously murdered by the natives, who had fled, taking the guns with them and most of the provisions. Eyre raised in his arms the body of the murdered man, received his last pathetic look of farewell, and in a moment more, without a wore, the spirit of the man, who had served )iim faithfully day and night for years had gone to rest. It is impossible to describe the appalling position in which Eyre was now placed. He was alone in the desert, with armed murderers probs. bly lying in wait for him, his sole companion a native lad, who, for aught he knew, might yet join the assassins; 600 miles of trackless desert before him, and 40 its, of flower, a little tea and sugar, and foar gallons of water constituting the sole stook of provisions. " Suffering and distress," says Eyre, in his graphie amount of the expedition," had well. nigh overwhelmed me,and life seemed hardly worth the effort necessary to prolong it. , Ages can never efface the horrors of this single night, nor would the wealth of the world ever tempt me to go through similar ones again." When the morning came the painful duty of paying the last sad offices of humanity to his faithful comrade had to be performOd. But it was not possible to dig a grave in that hard rooky ground, and there. , fore Eyre wrapped the body in a blanket, and Jett it on the spot where the treacherous shot had slain him. Then he and Wylie set for ward, and as hurriedly as they could pressed along their way. Bo ere nightfall Eyre was aware of the presince of the murderers dogging his footsteps, and he knew that, as they were armed, and carried a plentiful supply of stolen ammunition, any moment might be his last. They tame near enough to be heard calling with loud solieitation for Wylie to leave the traveller to himself and join them as his only hope of safety, but the boy was not to be moved by their entreaties. Eyre sought to enter into a parley with the men, but they were too cunning and too cowardly in heart to approach the intrepid man whose destruction they were plotting. When night closed in Eyre made a feint of encamping, .but under cover of the darkness he stole away and made along might's march, r then for seven days more he pressed forward, and so outstripped the miscreants, who were never heard of ' again, and probably died in the desert, retarded by the booty they had plundered.—From "Heroes of Britain in Peace and ," by Edwin Hodder, for November.