rigour of a northern snow storm.

The morning of the 2nd December was cloudy and lowering, and the wind
still hung in the N.W. There was truly every appearance of bad weather,
but our anxiety to proceed on our journey overcame our apprehensions,
and the animals were loaded and moved off at 7 a.m. The rain which had
fallen the evening previous, rendered travelling heavy; so that we got on
but slowly. At 11, the clouds burst, and continued to pour down for the
rest of the day. On leaving the creek we crossed the spine of the range,
and descending from it into a valley, that continued to the river on the
one hand, and stretched away to the N.W. on the other, we ascended some
hills opposite to us, and moved generally through open, undulating forest
ground, affording good pasturage.

SMOKING AN OPOSSUM.

One of the blacks being anxious to get an opossum out of a dead tree,
every branch of which was hollow, asked for a tomahawk, with which be cut
a hole in the trunk above where he thought the animal lay concealed. He
found however, that he had cut too low, and that it had run higher up.
This made it necessary to smoke it out; he accordingly got some dry grass,
and having kindled a fire, stuffed it into the hole he had cut. A raging
fire soon kindled in the tree, where the draft was great, and dense
columns of smoke issued from the end of each branch as thick as that from
the chimney of a steam engine. The shell of the tree was so thin that I
thought it would soon be burnt through, and that the tree would fall; but
the black had no such fears, and, ascending to the highest branch, he
watched anxiously for the poor little wretch he had thus surrounded with
dangers and devoted to destruction; and no sooner did it appear, half
singed and half roasted, than he seized upon it and threw it down to