142 A ROUGH FRIEND. 



before, so that we took pack horses, tents, and a great supply 

 of blankets and changes of clothes, for the extreme altitude and 

 temperature which we were to pass through. We started towards 

 the end of November, corresponding in the South Hemisphere 

 with the English May. This was known to be rather too early 

 in the season for the altitude we were to reach, but we wanted to 

 see the high mountain waterfolls, which lew persons do see, 

 because they dry up as the summer advances. 



300.— These white waterfalls are far more beautiful, and six 

 times as high as those of Niagara, though tiiey only drain the 

 winter accumulations of mountain tops, do not last long, and in 

 the volume of water falling are not a droj) in a bucket to the 

 great American cataract. 



;'>10. — When nearly at our highest altitude in the neighbour- 

 hood of Tarndale, we found ourselves one morning completely 

 hemmed in with snow. Our horses were none too well off in 

 such a country before, and our first fear was that they would now 

 get nothing to eat, but we soon saw that the short, thick-leaved 

 spear grass which had given them so much trouble to walk 

 through was now their staff of life. 



Although most of the horses in the party had never seen either 

 snow or spear grass before, we Avere much comforted to see that 

 nature taught them to seize the strong shai-p spikes carefully with 

 their teeth, and pull them up by the root, then dropping the plant 

 on the snow, they took it by the root, drawing the spikes behind 

 -and after devouring the root, dropped the tops of the spikes. 

 The root has the smell and taste of a parsnip, and proved a very 

 good food for the horses under very trying circumstances. 



311. — We had pitched our tents some little distance outside 

 ^ forest, or dry stony ground, so that we had some way to fetch 

 our firewood. We had no draft harness, or harness horses with 

 us, and our shod horses could not stand well on the snow. There 

 was one well bred mare, named " Grace Darling," in the party, 

 that had shown herself extremely quiet and tractable about 

 everything, and that had such wonderfully good hoofs that she 

 had not been shod, even for that rough journey. 



As she was the most likely subject for instruction and could 



