Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A Young Man Lost for Fifteen Days in the Woods of Oregon.
The Portland Oregonian of July 4 contains the following story of the sufferings of a young man, whose personal appearance, it says, indicates its truth. His acquaintances also say that he is trustworthy: During the last week of May a young man who had been for a long time employed in the Oregon Iron Works, went to the Dalles to work. After arriving there, having a few days’ time on hand before beginning work, he concluded to take a look at the country back of the Dalles. He started on the 30th of May, on foot. Toward night, when he thought to return or find a house for shelter, he discovered that he was quite uncertain as to the points of the compass; in short, he was lost in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. He slept of the ground, without any shelter, and next day renewed his efforts to find some human habitation. This day’s work was like the proceeding one, fruitless, and the young man, being without food, began to find exhaustion coming on. One day followed another in the vain effort to find a way out, until finally on the tenth day he arrived upon the summit of a high mountain, from which he got sight of Mt. Hood, and away in another direction a long, bright line of light which he took to be water. He started to go to it, and after five days of hard labor, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, he reached the stream, and found himself on the bank of the Columbia River, about three miles below the Dalles. He had now been out fifteen days, without food, except such berries as he chanced to find, and he thinks he did not eat more than a pint of berries. He was reduced almost to a skeleton, and was evidently upon the verge of insanity, which follows upon protracted hunger and hardship. He says that when he laid down to rest, which he had often to do on account of exhaustion, the coyotes came around him, seeming to understand his feeble condition, and to be impatient for the moment when, reduced to entire helplessness, he should fall prey to their ravenous appetites. When he would get up again the wolves would fall back, but continue to lurk around and follow him. Toward the last he had frequent spells of being entirely blind, which lasted sometime for an hour and a half hour. Upon arriving at the river, he shortly found a house, and got something to eat of the woman, the man of the house being absent. She, however, refused to let him sleep in the house, and he went and slept in a little barn. Next day he started for Dalles, but he was so weak that he was the whole day in making the distance of only three miles. he arrived back at this city about a week ago.