The magnificent semi-circle of the Southern Alps stood out, for a hundred miles from north to south, in appalling white distinctness, and no one in the whole Colony had ever seen the splendid range thus free from fleck or flaw.

We had done all we could within working distance, but what was, the use of digging in drifts thirty feet deep?
Amidst, and almost above, the terrible anxiety about our own individual safety,--for the snow was over the roof of many of the station-houses,--came the pressing question, "Where are the sheep ?" A profound silence unbroken by bleat of lamb, or bark of dog, or any sound of life, had reigned for many days, when a merciful north-westerly gale sprung, up, and releasing the heavily-laden earth from its white bondage, freed the miserable remnant of our flocks and herds.

At least, I should say, it freed those sheep which had travelled down to the vallies, driven before the first pitiless gusts, but we knew that many hundreds, if not thousands, of wethers must have been surprised and imprisoned far back among the hills.
Such knowledge could not be acted upon, however, for no human being could hope to plunge through the drifts around us.

Old shepherds who had lived on the run for fifteen years, confessed that they did not know their way fifty yards from the homestead.

The vallies were filled up, so that one gully looked precisely like its fellow; rocks, scrub, Ti-ti palms, all our local land-marks had disappeared; not a fence or gate could be seen in all the country side.