Imagine, then, a beautiful day in our early New Zealand autumn. For
a week past, a furious north-westerly gale had been blowing down the
gorges of the Rakaia and the Selwyn, as if it had come out of a
funnel, and sweeping across the great shelterless plains with
irresistible force. We had been close prisoners to the house all
those days, dreading to open a door to go out for wood or water,
lest a terrific blast should rush in and whip the light shingle roof
off. Not an animal could be seen out of doors; they had all taken
shelter on the lee-side of the gorse hedges, which are always
planted round a garden to give the vegetables a chance of coming up.
On the sky-line of the hills could be perceived towards evening,
mobs of sheep feeding with their heads _up_-wind, and travelling to
the high camping-grounds which they always select in preference to a
valley. The yellow tussocks were bending all one way, perfectly
flat to the ground, and the shingle on the gravel walk outside
rattled like hail against the low latticed windows. The uproar from
the gale was indescribable, and the little fragile house swayed and
shook as the furious gusts hurled themselves against it. Inside its
shelter, the pictures were blowing out from the walls, until I
expected them to be shaken off their hooks even in those rooms which
had plank walls lined with papered canvas; whilst in the kitchen,
store-room, etc., whose sides were made of cob, the dust blew in
fine clouds from the pulverized walls, penetrating even to the
dairy, and. settling half an inch thick on my precious cream. At
last, when our skin felt like tightly drawn parchment, and our ears
and eyes had long been filled with powdered earth, the wind dropped
at sunset as suddenly as it had risen five days before. We ventured
out to breathe the dust-laden atmosphere, and to look if the swollen
creeks (swollen because snow-fed) had done or threatened to do any