THE LATE SNOWSTORM.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9811, 3 August 1903, Page 1

THE LATE SNOWSTORM.

THE MACKENZIE COUNTRY.

Mr F. Moorhouse, an officer of the Tourist Resorts Department, arrived at Timaru last week from the Mackenzie Country. He was snowed up at Pukuki, on his* way down from the Hermitage, from the 13th to the 22nd, not because of the snow, but a dense fog which completely obscured the landscape. The snow all fell very dry and powdery, so that it was easily drifted. It was so dry that it was impossible to make a snowball with it. The snowfall was succeeded by very sharp frosts, and already the wild birds were suffering fatally, dead pukaki being seen along the road. Others weie passed, and were seen iloundering helplessly in the loose snow, into which they sank so far that they could not rise in flight off a flat place ; but they had learned that by scrambling up a steep and running down they could get up speed enough to start flying. Hard frost prevailed both day and night, and the night frosts were very severe. Every liquid in the house, milk, pickles, sauces, were frozen ; water jugs and water bottles were burst even in rooms where a good fire was kept; and a 400-gallon rain-water tank was frozen solid. No ice was found on the lake, but every pool was covered with thick ice. Native larks were seen frozen to death about the house, and some of the thousands of wild ducks on the lake came to the house seeking food with the fowls. Old residents say that the snowfall ot Saturday, the 11th, was the heaviest single fall' they had ever seen in the Mackenzie Country. It caught the majority quite unprepared for it. Mr Matheson, of Simon's Pass, has a few hundred bugs of chaff, which he is feeding to rams near home ; some other stations havo not even seen horse feed. AU are trying to get slieep out of deepei into shallower snow, and from wet flats up to drier slopes, by making tracks with improvised snow-ploughs ; but there seemed to be at the moment little advantage in this operation, the slopes also being snow-clad. The sheep are stated to be eating each other's wool, which is as fatal as starvation. In one case a runholder, unable to get at any slieep. had been driven to slaughter a. horse to feed liis dogs. Some cattle were seen near Burke's Pass, apparently nearly dead. On a clear day the Mackenzie Country just now is a magnificent spectacle, but enjoymetit of it as a picture Ls marred by consideration for the thousands of poor sheep in miserable? plight, and for the owners toiling to ameliorate their lot and mitigate their own losses.