THE WEATHEE UP COUNTRY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10423, 27 July 1895, Page 6

THE WEATHEE UP COUNTRY.

The Blackstone correspondent of the Otngo Witness writes under date 22ud Jnly :— _ The = weather, that time-worn subject has .become, to .us a mutter of very serWs hn't^TvJ-? °X? Of lettßK some months ago I stated that there were indications of a ve-y severe winter, and I am only too torry to say that ay statement has been verified. On June 14 it .began to snow, and kept on doing so at intervals for over four weelcs. Bad it not bean for aeon, tmuoiu thaw the snow would have cached a depta of 4ft or sft on the low lamls. On the mountains it is supposed to have reached lift or more. Inereis now 2ft of snow on the ground anaifcis freezinK hard, accompanied by a bitterly • cold wind. The roads are ia a fearful state Last week u wo waggoners took two days tn cover a distance of nine m.les;- The oldest residents say they do not remember si) severe a winter. What the losei m «toek will amount to it is difficult to say, but it will be something enormous, and when the snow clears away there will be many tail* to ran, tor thousands of sheep are snowed up anri all ?, opeL?fEnding them alive has long since vanished Mr KUiofct, manager for Rosa and Gleudinm"' deserves great praise for the manner in which he worked, ably assisted by the shepherds, in trying to save the sbeep. Their efforts we almost superhuman They spent days in trying to .make tracts for the sheep with their hoiaes and where the homes could not travel the men went single his and cleared the snow so as to get the flocks off che nigh lands. To fully' appreciate the efforts made, one must understand the difficulties and even dangers which beaet them—out until !) or 10 o clock at night among the mountains, nothing nut a dreary waste of snow, aud whsn they reached tueir camp they were like rooviag icicles. But this is not the first time Mr Elliott and his men nave displayed their "energy aud courage, and if a Station will not pay under his management it is a poor look-out for other squatters. There will be little or no shearing here this year, far what with the sheep which perished aud the fact that before the others could be rescued they had b^gun to eat the wool and ears off each other, few 'will live until shearing time. A change would he decidedly welcome, for all the animals are starving and not a tussock to be seea. The winter of 1895 will lone be rerntmbered, and the effects of it will be felt both directly and indirectly for a very loos time I (to not know whether the two earthquake shocks which we had iust bofora the *now moved us a few degrees nearer the South Pole, but iuc^ln* from after events X think it must have been so

— It is a noteworthy fact that the majority of the colour-blind people belong to what are called the educated classes, and that of these, takiug the civilised nations through, no le*s than £ pei ceut. br.Te this defect.