I Rode Home To Fetch Assistance And Food; These Arriving, By Our United Efforts We Got Them Over Every Stream, Save The Last, Before Eight O'clock, And Then It Became Quite Dark, And We Left Them.

The wind changed from very cold to very hot - it literally blew hot and cold in the same breath. Rain came down in torrents, six claps of thunder (thunder is very rare here) followed in succession about midnight, and very uneasy we all were.

Next morning, before daybreak, we were by the river side; the fresh had come down, and we crossed over to the sheep with difficulty, finding them up to their bellies in water huddled up in a mob together. We shifted them on to one of the numerous islands, where they were secure, and had plenty of feed, and with great difficulty recrossed, the river having greatly risen since we had got upon its bed. In two days' time it had gone down sufficiently to allow of our getting the sheep over, and we did so without the loss of a single one.

I hardly know why I have introduced this into an account of a trip with a bullock dray; it is, however, a colonial incident, such as might happen any day. In a life of continual excitement one thinks very little of these things. They may, however, serve to give English readers a glimpse of some of the numerous incidents which, constantly occurring in one shape or other, render the life of a colonist not only endurable, but actually pleasant.

CHAPTER IX

Plants of Canterbury - Turnip - Tutu - Ferns - Ti Palm - Birds - Paradise Duck - Tern - Quail - Wood Hen - Robin - Linnet - Pigeon - Moa - New Parroquet - Quadrupeds - Eels - Insects - Weta - Lizards.

The flora of this province is very disappointing, and the absence of beautiful flowers adds to the uninteresting character which too generally pervades the scenery, save among the great Southern Alps themselves. There is no burst of bloom as there is in Switzerland and Italy, and the trees being, with few insignificant exceptions, all evergreen, the difference between winter and summer is chiefly perceptible by the state of the grass and the temperature. I do not know one really pretty flower which belongs to the plains; I believe there are one or two, but they are rare, and form no feature in the landscape. I never yet saw a blue flower growing wild here, nor indeed one of any other colour but white or yellow; if there are such they do not prevail, and their absence is sensibly felt. We have no soldanellas and auriculas, and Alpine cowslips, no brilliant gentians and anemones. We have one very stupid white gentian; but it is, to say the least of it, uninteresting to a casual observer. We have violets, very like those at home, but they are small and white, and have no scent. We have also a daisy, very like the English, but not nearly so pretty; we have a great ugly sort of Michaelmas daisy too, and any amount of spaniard.

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