I cannot resist the temptation to touch upon one of the winter amusements which came to us two years later.

Yet the word "amusement" seems out of place, no one in the Province having much heart to amuse themselves, for the great snow storm of August, 1867, had just taken place, and we were in the first days of bewilderment at the calamity which had befallen us all.

A week's incessant snow-fall, accompanied by a fierce and freezing south-west wind, had not only covered the whole of the mountains from base to brow with shining white, through which not a single dark rock jutted, but had drifted on the plains for many feet deep.

Gullies had been filled up by the soft, driving flakes, creeks were bridged over, and for three weeks and more all communication between the stations and the various townships was cut off.

The full extent of our losses was unknown to us, and dreary as were our forebodings of misfortune, none of us guessed that snow to be the winding sheet of half a million of sheep.