The Snow Camp.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13834, 20 February 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Snow Camp.

REMINISCENCES OF BAD "WINTEKS. ; (T. D. Burnett, Mt. Cook.) A great plain, the centre or tho Mackenzie covered with snow, a great win to blanket, two, three, feel; inick. Kinged round in the distances, ranges of hills; to the west and nor'west the Alps, where, only, on the great rock precipices of Ulentanner, can the eye find anything restfully black to light on. A feebly weak sugar-and-water sun is shining in the extreme north, its rays, at such a low angle that they have 110 thawing power wnatevei" on the snow plain. 'ihe sky is of a deep blue, unilecked by a single cloud, but to the nor'-west, over tne crests of the higher Alps,, over Cook and Setton, it is richly coppered and gdded, 3—tlie„ sham nor'-wester sky—as great , a hoax as any mirage that ever Uroke the heart of a desert explorer. There is hardly a sound, not a bird's note, not a breath of air, only now and again the lifting and falling of. the atmosphere lets in the subdued murmur of the distant Tekapo or Pukaki rivers. Down the "Waitaki gorges are banks of lake fog, driven into, retreat for the time being, to nurse their strength there for a stealing sweep over the country again. The snowfall. had been preceded by a wild night of wind and rain from the nor'-west, plain and peak lashed and scourged in Heaven's anger. At grey dawn the wind lulled, and quietly and imperceptibly the rain gave place to fine snowttakes from the sou'-east. With the coming day the sheep shook their rain-sodden coats and broke camp to move out, unreal, spectrelike objects in the bewildering, quietly falling snow, moving and nibbling from tussock top to tussock top. The flakes grew larger, and by ten o'clock the snow lay eight inches deep. The sheep had ceased to spread, the tallest silver tussock had by this just its last summer head above the thickening blanket. Then a change in the movements of the sheep began, a tendency to draw in, to bunch together, a desire for the society of their fellows; the more the better, the more grey and black grease-tipped merino coats for their distracted eyes to vest on, the better for their poor paralysed. semi-mesmerised minds. And so the snow camps were formed, here fifteen sheep bunched, to tho right there fiftv, ahead a hundred, away over there hundreds. In the larger camps _ the . gregarious movement was more tun 11 stroug, it was determined, so much so that weaker members of the flock were pinned and pressed under foot. Ihe snow mounts, higher and lusher round the sides of the hemmed-in sheep, lne restless movements of the animals tramps tho snow under foot into hard compactness, and from the thaw nig snow falling 011 their warm and sodden coats a curious smell arises, as of liewly mixed cement. By four of the Julv' evening of the second day the snow fog banks lifted to let 111 the evening sun, to rose tint the "\\intiy a white world, showing up in black relief the half score of sheep camps all unprepared for the long ;lllcl terrible ordeal that awaited them, hemmed in bv three feet of snoi\. For a day or two the sheep stood thus stupid, snow mesmerised, then, before their first strength left them, the larger camps began to work towards one another, here and there led by a big wether who after three or four plunges lies belly deep, exhausted in the snow. To other camps, to big black rocks, or to stunted scrub trees they worked while strength yet remained to them; and before the frost crust made such work impossible —something to uork to, something of other colour than the universal whiteness around them. Within a few days most of the camps were connected with one another, resembling a cluster of manure-stained islands with isthmian connections, set in a sea of pure white snow. And overhead is a critical ever watchful aerial audience of nrulls, close observers of the plav below them —the agony-play of Death.

It"is the sixth week of the .ordeal of the imprisoned slieep. Four weeks ago they commenced dying in sections, ago in companies, this week they are going down in battalions. First those which have been sickly, having caught a cold coming off the shears, and were never able to throw it off. They were the first to answer the call that has no refusal. Then the sliortlegged deep . bodied Vermont, the wrinkly American merino, let his heart drop and threw up the sponge. Of what use was his beautiful silky dense wool in this, the day, of trial, when the very properties of bis coat denied him the robust constitution so necessary in a sub-alpine climate? And after these followed those hurt in the draftings of

tin ".S&r-'JS last summer, by people with more dogs than sympathy for sheep. The camps ■are now dotted and stacked with the doad. Where a number of snow tracks meet, or in the hollows of the camps, the dead are lying in heaps, two, four, six feet high. Even grim Deatn loses some of Ins terrors when you go to meet liim in good company, and the poor creatures have crawled 011 the top of dead mates to make the journey. And still some of those in the heaps have the breath of life iii them. Many of the dead have all the wool from their exposed sides eaten off by the living, and numbers also have ears and other parts of the body chewed by sheep trying to relieve the pangs of extreme starvation.

From end to end of the jointed camps and amidst the maze of their snow workings, the survivors move slowly and listlessly,. or stand with roached backs and drooping heads awaiting their call. In the place where the stomach should be there is only a handful of wool and some folds of tucked skin, lost somewhere up under the loins. The wool is dry and dead looking, the eye dull ana expressionless, while instead of the beautifully oiled appearance of , a healthy sheep's face these have dry and staring face skins; round the lips are scabbed and warty growths caused by extreme poverty of blood and sucking at frozen snow! From a corner of the camp comes a horrible wailing bleat, half cough, half bleat — almost human in sound from a sheep dying extra hard. Near a heap of dead sheep some men are busy skinning, and spreading the skins on the untramped snow surface outside the camp, while all around they have placed on their backs to thaw those frozen too hard for skinning. They work most successfully at "those from the centre of the heaps —the outer covering of dead has kept the frost from those beneath. A man puts a knife into the leg of a seemingly dead animal, when the shrinking flesh squirms like the skin of an eel —" Good God, there's life in this object,' yet." The flockowner is standing near by easing his back after pulling off an extra hard skin. He looks round at the misery and agony that the camps contain, and then across the snowy wastes to the Alps at the sham nor'wester sky. Hope is about dead in him, and his is a face that shows it, a face that looks contracted, smaller the eyes narrowed and dry, as .if the brain behind them had been scorched by the want of healthy sleep during the last six weeks. Up and down on the verandah at the homestead, in backward and forward uneasy pacing, when other people have been asleep, he has been watching for" the thawing nor'-west wind which, so long waited for, seems to have deserted the country. Tho mouth has a curious droop at the corners, the sign of bursts of despair, when he has doubted everything, the goodness of things, the perfection of creation, and if effort is worth while. "Where is your God now?" lie asks of a man next him,"who wisely forbears to add fuel to hopelessness.

But here is a pleasing contrast wherein four mountain bred sheep-stags—tho despised animal of the flockmaster, are saving the situation. Born at tho head of the Hoophorn Creek, at the foot of Lacliie's Basin, Birch Hill, they liavo been mountain in-bred for twenty generations, and are a clear instance of reversion to type. Left free from the interfering hand of man for a thousand years, they would have thrown back completely to their remote ancestor tho argali, with as much freedom from snow losses as the Swiss chamois, but their flesh would be as much venison as mutton and their coats would have more hair than true wool. In their veins runs some of the most aristocratic merino blood in South Canterbury, for their ancestors, taken to Birch Hill by -Big Mick, were moulded an dporfected under the hands of Harris arid Innes, then'by Edward Elworthy and Harry Ford at the old Holme station, Pareora. These latter day descendants of the old breed have completely lost the characteristics of the old Elworthy merino, are big, high shouldered, narrow, flat ribbed, deep of body, long and pointed of muzzle, with heavy stockish horns joined at their bases. The face'is bare of wool right back to the ears, aiid the. wool is very remarkable, being of such a strong and silvery character as to seem more quarter-bred than truo merino. Twenty generations of mountain inbreeding have so lengthened their legs that one would fancy that two feet of/ snow would not seriously inconvenience them. Caught as two year old rams along with other wild sheep by Lachic MaeDonald, and yarded after a fine exhibition of mountain sheep work, they were so much attached to one another that on the first being caught the other three charged repeatedly to save their mate. (An actual experience of the writer's father.) hen Bircli Hill in disgust threw up its lease in through idiotic lease conditions and an encroaching tourist traffic, these four mates were sold to this distant sheep station with the remnant of the flock. Grazing by themselves and always on that part of their new home nearest to their beloved . Birch Hill, they show that pecularity always so noticeable in mountain-bred creatures, whether man or animal, a decided disinclination to mix with those bred and reared elsewhere. Keeping away from the commonalty in the snow camps, it was not long before thev winded the tussock and scrub showing through the snow on the banks of the frozen creek some four or nye hundred vards away from whore the snow fall*had caught them. Three orI four plunges towards the creek, ami the leading stag is exhausted; a nudge or two from the fore hoof of a. mate, and then lie is superseded by the next in line, who plunges round him to take the lead. And so by change ot_ leaders and after many halts the frozen creek is reached, where they are shortly followed by the stronger sheep. In a week Mie creek's banks aro transformed; the strong matakauri scrub is shredded to the ground, the very tussock roots are scraped for, tho frozen ground eaten. Again the mountainbred lead, and again it is the crowd s place to follow —a fast diminishing lemnant of the strongest sheep. Tins time it is to some distant morainie knolls where an ancient Ice Age had left huge rock slabs to act in this latter day as reflectors to set up a thaw in the sunshine at noon. By the seventh week the northern sides of the knolls aie showing up grey with bushes ot the snow grass thrusting their heads through the crust of snow. Ihc mountaineers know by instinct that an. August sun will have tho snow on that side in a slushy state by noon, and tliat means easy progress from snow glass bush to bush, and that the snow will have power enough to thaw the night s frost out of their bones. I'rom knoll to knoll, along the spine-like moraiuu; ridges, the mountain breds lead, and the commonalty follow. Then comes a morning .m tlio nintn week, when the nor'-wester declares war on King Frost and his grim camp follower, Death, who is always hot of foot at the heels of t<ie the avalanches from distant feoftou and Tasnuin herald his declaration bj booming and crashing, soon to be joined bv the sharper and longer rolling peals oi thunder. The nor'-wester sends far ahead flying columns of skirmishing storm streamers, while lum main body pouring over the alps in lieaiy black nimbus clouds. Soon the snow canii>s feel his advance in the rapidly softening snow. Then his main attack is delivered in a deluge of warm The plain is greving fast: by nightfall it will all be black but for the gullies and hollows which will be picked out m long

white enake-wreaths of snow, and through it all, on top of a. knoll, stand the four old stags with thoir heads up wind, drinking in the warm throwing storm. Twelve years old, if a day and with constitutions us strong as a, horse s. Five months" late?, and the"sun Is »1 most + vertical. There is a hot smell of .i hotter sun striking on rapidly ripening tussock seed, and the distant TeP® riverbed is mirage dancing ■ to meet you. The air is a-q„iver with the rasping tune of the terakikihi (the singmg locust of the back country), while the> scythe-sharpening note of the little dottrel is'almost'jointed with, the sharp energetic call of the quick-mov-ing redbill. lhe bobby headed' white clover and the rich green and red sorrel are spreading rank and strong over the merinos' golgotlia of the past wint?l'- Uuder a big rock on the south side of the knolls our four old friends the stags stand with heads together, out of the sun. Poor old stags, they have done more for the saving of their fellows than those who, standing as Providence to the sheep, have let their brains run to the building up of a toUrist traffic instead of the planning of a, national scheme for the reduction -of South Canterbury's snow losses.

Note. —In the historic snowstorm of 1895, no less than 700,000 sheep were lost in the high country of the South Island. In 1903 on country between the Waitaki and Rangitata held'under the tenure known as"pastoral linconse" 100,000 sheep went down, and to thesn must be added those lost on the small grazing runs and also on freehold properties. In 1895 on the Richmond country, in the angle between the Godley arid Macaulay rivers, 7000 sheep perished in one huge camp, and in the same year on Sawdon flat against tho Tekapo river 3000 sheep died miserably. These losses affect the whole of South Canterbury, for they depreciate < the Mackenzie Country by at least 60 per cent., which rightly handled should bo the breeding ground for the fattening front country, and it affected Tiniaru by lessening the amount of produce sent away. . .