4-007 (Raw)

File contents

<source><g=m><o=i><age=un><status=4><abode=19><p=vic><r=prw><tt=pc><4-007>
I do not know how to begin to write after such a long silence, and the longer one is without writing the more difficult it is to begin, but though so long silent, there was none of you ever forgotten for a single day. The reason I did not write from the first was I had bad luck from the very first and as I was always in the hope of something turning up and then I would have written with some heart. But the news I have heard these last few weeks has stupified me. Mother I could hardly expect to be alive, but as for you James, and poor dear Charles, I thought you were all as I left you. Well if you will answer me now and let me know what happened poor Charles and when mother and him died, I would take it as a great treat for with what news I have heard lately, I feel downhearted, as I have come to the sad conclusion that I am on this side of the water alone. [50] When we first landed Noble and me went to the digging, done no good: I got fever from which I would have never recovered, had it not been for Mr. Orr wife and family: they are the only friends I have got here and they are friends indeed. Noble and me managed to keep together pretty well for a couple of years or so until I got my back crushed from which I never properly recovered. I was laid up for 12 months: during this time Noble went to the diggings again, promising to write to me as soon as he was settled, but I never got a letter from him nor heard of him but once and then I could not trace him out. But Mr. Orr seen him some years afterwards and told Noble to beware of, I almost said men, but I had better say savages or wild beasts: I mean the men Noble was working with. With what Mr. Orr has told me and Noble disappearing all at once, we can only come to one opinion as to what happened to him and that is too horrible to even think of. 
When I was last parted with poor Ezekiel, he was going to Bendigo district; I wanted him to stop about the Melbourne district where I was then, but he fancied he could do better about Bendigo. We parted with the understanding that when we were both settled, we would try and find each other and write, but shortly afterwards, I went to New Zealand and I never seen my kind hearted brother afterwards nor never will in this world. Eating unwholesome food in New Zealand brought on liver complaint, which I never could get rid of, but enough of this. 
After I came from New Zealand I had always the hope of bettering my position, before looking for Ezekiel or Noble, so time slipped away until I was told of the advertisement in the paper. Then I set to look for them in good earnest; I advertised for Ezekiel in the up-country papers and stoped in town trying all schemes to find either or both. I firmly believed Ezekiel was alive until yesterday when I found he had died at the Melbourne hospital of fever on 16th May 1863. Dying in the hospital here is no disgrace, as it is the only place a single man can go and a man with no money as Ezekiel had, must pay 2 guineas a week and if he dies he is buried in a respectable manner, out of his own money and if there is any left, it is handed to the curator of the estates deceased persons. 
<\4-007><\g=m><\o=i><\age=un><\status=4><\abode=19><\p=vic><\r=prw><\tt=pc>