Rhode Island American

FROM A SCOTCH PAPER.
INTERESTING CIRCUMSTANCE.
On the 15th ultimo, W. Roan, labourer, from
New-Galloway, went out to cut peat on a moss
near the summit of the hill of Lowrane, a very
high, remote and solitary place. He took his
son along with him, a little boy of about four
years of age. After having been employed for
a short time, he missed the child, who had been
amusing himself in chasing a kid which he had
found on the hill, and he became alarmed lest he
should have fallen into one of the many moss-
pits, or quagmires, or stumbled over some of the
rocks or precipices with which the place
abounds. No trace of the boy, however, could
be found. In vain did he call upon his name,
for no answer was returned. The natural anx-
iety of the father, whose feelings may be easily
conceived, led him from place to place with the
utmost rapidity, sometimes finding the prints of
his son's feet in the soft part of the moss; but he
never dreamed of crossing a high stone wall or
dyke which runs on the south side of the moor
alluded to, down the steep and rocky sides of the
mountain, to the margin of the Dee, which flows
on one side, and Loch Ken on the other. Over
this dyke he conceived it impossible for the child
to have climbed. In the evening he found
means to send to New-Galloway an account
of the circumstance, and several humane per-
sons, accompanied by the distracted mother,
came to aid his search for the poor child in this
wild and rocky moor! One of them, happening
to cross over the stone wall alluded to, perceiv-
ed there the impression of the boy's footsteps.
and these were occasionally traced all the way
down to the margin of the Dee, where they lost
all trace of the unfortunate little wanderer, and
were filled with the most painful apprehensions
that he must have been carried off by the stream.
Going along its banks, and crossing dykes and
steeps, which they conceived it almost impossi-
ble the child could have climbed, they again
found the print of his naked feet on the soft sand
of a small rivulet, and by applying a measure
which they had taken of the former impressions,
they found it exactly to correspond. They
were therefore induced still to go forward.
though they had now proceeded upwards of four
miles from the place of their setting out. In this
track they had passed the Stroan Loch, a piece
of water of great depth, which is merely an ex-
pansion of the Dee, accompanied by the anxious
father and mother, without finding any further
traces of the boy. Night was now coming down
upon the heath; and as the search had contin-
ued eleven hours, over a rugged space of five
miles, they thought of retracing their steps in
despair—the distracted mother tearing her hair.
and starting at every white stone, and figuring
to herself the horrid spectacle of the torn corpse
of her child at the bottom of every cliff or stream
—
"Hark to the hurried question of despair,
"Where is my child!" and echo answer,
"Where?"
At this time one of the party, who had been be-
fore the rest, on looking into the stream of the
Dee, found a handkerchief round a stone, in the
channel of the river, which he recognized to be
that of the child, and had now little doubt that
he would be found drowned near this place in
the stream. He called the rest of the party to ap-
proach, when a little farther down the bank,
he perceived the boy with his feet in the
water, and his head resting on a stone, in a quiet
sleep. "Jemmy! Jemmy!" cried the trem-
bling father, "are you alive? The little pilgrim.
lifting his head from his rocky pillow, exclaimed,
"O father! is it you? What for did ye no come
help me catch the wee kid?" The little fellow's
cup was filled with pebbles, with which he had
pursued the kid from rock to rock, from moss to
moss, and through the openings of stone dykes,
for upwards of six miles, barefooted, over one of
the most rugged tracks in the South of Scotland,
and having been for twelve hours without tast-
ing a morsel of food. The sudden joy of the
mother had nearly cost her her life; but the
young wanderer, in whom we may prognosti-
cate some future Humboldt or Mackenzie, has
not suffered any injury from his long peregrina-
tion, and his safety, amid the many perils with
which he was beset, seems almost miraculous,
and strongly marks the protecting care of Di-
vine Providence.