Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/156

132 groaning with cold, and refusing any consolation, certain that we should never reach our destination. It was nearly nine o'clock when the driver shouted, "There it is, that's the hotel light!" but from the despairing cook came a cry, "No, no! it is only a star!"

The little hotel was banked up with fully three feet of snow; dogs barked; the door opened, its welcome fire-light streaming out. We dismounted, our clothes frozen stiff, and the poor Frenchman so frozen we had to lift him out of the saddle, and drop him, in a sitting position, into a chair. Entering by a small bar room, behold! shelves of bottled beer, glass broken, the beer, frozen, standing alone! In the inner room were several belated shepherds, and a mounted constable, who at once took charge of us. No one was allowed close to the fire till we got accustomed to the temperature; then we had hot tea with a dash of whisky in it, and it was strange to find, with the thermometer at zero, that boiling water seemed scarcely more than lukewarm. Then came a good meal, but the cook was so frost-bitten, that he had to be rubbed with snow, till he roared with pain, and was quite unfit for further travel.

A brilliant sun, no wind, keen frost, made our journey pleasant the next day, but very slow. This part of the mountain country, which is a high plateau between the western and eastern ranges that form the backbone of the South Island, stretches for fifty miles devoid of timber, with several extensive lakes; good sheep country in summer, but rather dangerous in winter. As we rode, every now and then we noticed rounded hummocks of snow grouped together; places where sheep had been snowed up without any sort