A Transformation Scene.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 23, 20 April 1870, Page 3

A Transformation Scene.

(Canterbury Preia.) The date, January 1860.—The province, Otago. There are two of us on horseback. We have ridden as far up country as the linger of man has as yet made any appreciable impression, We spend the night at j||last formed homestead, and our friend bids us a hearty farewell in tliePPairly morning. Our way now is marked by a succession of small white flags, placed at long intervals on the line chosen for the road, and the tracks of a team of bullocks and a dray that have made one journey and returned, It is late at night when we reach, our destination, having ridden a matter of forty miles or more. We find a rude hut, and a shepherd and his wife duly installed in it. We pitch our tent close at hand, turn our horses loose, lay out our blankets, and sleep soundly. Next morning we look about us. A mob of sheep has been placed on the run, sufficient to secure the lease, and more are to follow. Wild pigs are here in large quantities. On account of certain natural boundaries, -we do not find it very difficult to keep the sheep together. Our existence is somewhat lonely, but the entire novelty of the situation has not yet worn off. We receive periodical visits of the dray from town about every four months, when our stock of station necessaries is replenished. "We have a river abounding in eels, thousands of ducks, and a fine stretch of level country, with wellgrassed downs, and higher ranges at the back. Not a soul conies near us for nionths at a time, and the occasional visits from the nearest stations are very few and far between. For the next two years we are employed in forming a station, and carrying on the usual routine operations connected with sheep-farming in the rough. The first season we drive our sheep to a neighbouring run nearer town, and shear them to avoid the waste of time, trouble, and expense incurred in the extra carriage of the wool. The next season we shear at home. We become intimately acquainted with scab in its most virulent form, and sheep-dipping at this distance from town is anything but a sinecure. I would rather not dilate upon the horrors of this scourge, or say how many times we mustered, how many times we dipped. Nor do 1 care to relate the incidents connected with the last muster but one, when we were entirely clean, but unfortunately brought in two unshorn sheep that had never been penned. Suffice it to say that our certificate was suspended for another three months. The memory of the realities is sufficient, though I am in duty bound to say that we completely eradicated the disease at last. But at the end of the second season I was thoroughly tired of station life in the back, and one fine day started off for town, and once more lived, and moved, and had my being, in the midst of stirring scenes of activity. Now I must ask my indulgent readers to knock off reading for (say) five minutes, and exert their fertile imaginations in filling in the details of the picture of which, I flatter myself, I have given a tolerable outline, and try and form some definite idea of the very primitive state of things in that back country in those days. The date, December 1864.—The province, Otago. I once more visit the old hut, now a flourishing roadside accommo-dation-house. The road formerly marked by little flags is now the main road into the interior, and hundreds of tons of merchandise are constantly passing. I count more than twenty teams of bullocks and horses, each with its heavily-laden wagon or dray, drawn up round the hut for a midday-spell. In the very creek close to where I used to to dip my bucket for two years, a party of miners has taken out over sixty ounces of gold in about five weeks from a few feet from the surface, and deep sinking is still going on in the vicinity. Three miles away a large township has sprung up, and stores and publichouses are doing an enormous business. Sevtn miles distant in another direction is another township equally as flourishing, nnother at four miles, another at nine, and many others still further away, each one the centre of a large and thriving population. Pedestrians -for the most part mitiers, with their household gods upon their backs in the shape of swags, or leading pack-horses—and others on horseback, together with the wagons and drays, literally line the road. And as a matter of course the übiquitous and enterprising firm of Cobb and Co. are running coaches past the hut daily, and copies of the Otago Daily Times are flying about one day after issue. And what motive power could ever have accomplished such a marvellous transformation in such an incredible jehort space of time but gold ? % Joen Brows.